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Don’t Take Article Scope as a Given

You’ve picked an article, started in on it, and discovered that it’s getting too long, or
one part of it is getting too long. Or, alternatively, you don’t
believe can build it up into something reasonably good. If so, rethink
the article’s scope. You don’t have to accept what you’re found, when
you started on the article, as the definitive boundaries of the
article’s scope.

Too Much Content: Spinoffs

Chapter 13 (When an article gets too long) explains how to spin off
a section of an article into a new article. That’s the way to go
when a section become too long and is about a subject notable enough
for an article of its own. Keep this concept in mind as you work on
any article: If a section becomes so long that it unbalances an
article, if it’s truly notable and not a collection of minor
facts—spin it off.

Overlapping Content: Merging

Say that you’ve starting working on the article Thingabobbery, and
you notice that another article,
Thingabboberists (about the professionals who do thingabobbery for a living), has
a lot of overlap in content. Moreover, there aren’t a lot of
articles about one that don’t discuss the other.

Wikipedia has a standard solution for overlapping articles—merge them. Merging is a normal editing action, something any editor can do. You’re not required to propose it to other editors, and you don’t have to ask an administrator to help you do it. If you think merging something improves Wikipedia, you can be bold and just do it. ...

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